A quartet of state attorneys general and a pack of plaintiffs attorneys haul Meta into federal court in tort-hellhole Oakland on Tuesday — out to milk as many billions as they can from the tech giant in the name of protecting America’s kids.

Of course, if that were their true goal they’d be going after TikTok and YouTube first, since teens use both much more, before assaulting Instagram’s owner.

But Meta has the deepest pockets, a market cap of $1.5 trillion . . . which, not coincidentally, about matches the damages the litigants seek.

Nor is this case actually about any real harm done to any child: It centers on Meta’s supposed violations of 1950s-era state business-practices and consumer-protection laws, as the AGs claim that company leaders said the app was “safe” even as they pushed to make Instagram enjoyable enough that kids kept coming back.

(The states have other gripes, but they’re even more dubious.)

Some key points:

• The plaintiffs bar has gobbled up hundreds of billions from “safety” litigation these last few decades, without making much of anything safer: The lawyers pick a “bad guy” and talk juries into “making them pay,” with attorneys typically consuming much or even most of the award.
• State AGs have been getting in on the act for years now, reaping personal political rewards, likewise with no gains for society — and they’ve even taken to contracting out the lawsuits to the tort bar, giving the plaintiffs attorneys government power to work their plundering games.
• Lawsuits like this would transform the US legal treatment of tech into something much like that of the European Union — laws that blocked the tech revolution there, so that the EU has seen almost zero economic growth this century.
• Bankrupting Meta (or just bleeding it a lot) won’t fix a thing.

If society wants to do something about children’s use of tech, it needs to pass laws that address the issue: Maybe start by mandating age-verification safeguards, parental controls etc. be factory-installed on the smartphones the kids use — phones an adult is almost always paying for.

The Oakland case, like hundreds of suits about teens and social media across the nation, isn’t about fixing anything; it’s all nothing but legal and political sharks profiteering by pretending to stand up for the little guy.

This racket is as despicable as anything they claim to be fighting against.